General Information

Marjorie Hayes

Marjorie Hayes creates performances that engage and excite audiences in the U.S. and Europe.   In 2017, Hayes was an Institute of the Arts Fellow and created The Women Who Compose for Broadway, celebrating the few women composers who have broken the glass ceiling of Broadway in the last 100 years. The show premiered at the Triad Theatre, NYC, and was produced by Bishop Arts Theatre Center, Dallas.  Last summer, she directed The Metromanics for Theatre 40 in Los Angeles which received nominations for “Best Director Comedy” and “Best Comedy” by the 36^th Annual Robby Awards.

Ms. Hayes was awarded an Artslink Grant in 2005 to direct a site-specific production of Brecht/Weill’s socio-political musical Happy End for Teatr Wybrze?e   , one of Poland’s professional state theatres.  It was staged at the Gdansk shipyard, the exact factory where the Solidarity movement started, and her production employed out-of-work shipyard workers as chorus.  Later, her co-translation of Happy End was produced and ran for a year at the Polish National Theatre and subsequently received another production at the Theatre of the Baltic. Her production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost in Czech Republic was nominated for Best Theatre Production of 1999 in the major Czech theatre journal “Divadelni Noviny.”  In 1998, Ms. Hayes was awarded a United States Senior Fulbright Fellowship to Poland, where she had been an international actor at Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Theatre Laboratory for several years. This time she directed Three Tall Women at Teatr Wspó?czesny.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Ms. Hayes’ production of The Food Chain at the Circle Theatre was chosen as one of the “Top Ten Productions of 2000? by the Dallas Morning News. In 1995, she was the recipient of the Austin Circle of Critics Award for Best Director-Drama for Fuente Ovejuna.  She directed My Sister in This House for Wingspan Theatre, which was named by two reviewers at one of the top productions of 2009.  Criticalrant.com affirmed her as one of six directors in the DFW area to celebrate.

As an actress, Hayes has worked Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, film and commercials.  Her films include the award-winning Topeka, and a leading role in Uncertain, TX which premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2011. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area she has especially enjoyed playing lead roles in Mothers and Sons for Uptown Players (regional premiere) at the historic Kalita Humphreys Theatre, Buried Child at Kitchen Dog Theater and Aunt Eller in Oklahoma! for Casa Manana at Bass Hall.

As a concert artist, she performed in Poland at the Non-Stop Festival and toured Finding Home to seven venues including the WROSTJA Festival of One-Actor and the famous dissident club Piwnica pod Baranami.  She has been a lead soloist in four Story Songs benefit concerts directed by Tony Award winner Betty Buckley.  Her highly acclaimed cabaret set “Taking Chances,” has played in LA, DFW and New York City.

Ms. Hayes is a Professor of Acting-Directing at the University of North Texas. She has also served as the Managing Director of Theatre Production there.  Hayes is the Administrator for Betty Buckley’s Workshops in Fort Worth.  She received her BFA in Acting from California Institute of the Arts and her MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University.  She is a member of the performing artists unions: Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Actors’ Equity Association, and SAG-AFTRA.

For more information please contact:

marjorie@unt.edu